If neither the internet nor your own library has the full texts of the sources you’ve identified through subject heading searches, keyword searches, citation or related record searches, or those done through published bibliographies, several mechanisms are available that will usually enable you locate copies.
The first place to look is the WorldCat database. A free version exists on the Internet at www.worldcat.org. Essentially, it is a merger of the individual catalogs of more than 70,000 libraries in 170 countries; it contains records for more than 2 billion items (albeit with much duplication). In addition to books, it lists maps, magazines and journals, prints, photographs, sound recordings, photographic slides, newspapers, motion pictures, manuscripts, and many other formats. Whatever gets cataloged by any of the participating libraries winds up in the pot for everyone to search. Library locations are provided for most (but not all) of the items.
There is also a subscription version of WorldCat available through most public and academic libraries; it has better search software than the free version, enabling you to make more complex inquiries. (If you are using the free version, however, be sure to select the Advanced Search screen, which is not its default page.) This database forms the backbone of the interlibrary loan network within which most libraries operate.
Another source for identifying library locations of older resources is also useful. It is the National Union Catalog: Pre-1956 Imprints (London: Mansell, 1968–1981). This is a 754-volume printed set listing more than 12 million entries (both catalog records and cross-references), with library locations, for works published worldwide before 1956 as reported by about 1,100 libraries in North America. Although many cyberlibrarians now look upon the set with open contempt as a bibliographic dinosaur and assume that “it’s all been digitized,” they are unfortunately mistaken. Two major studies have recently confirmed that about 25 to 27.8 percent of the NUC’s entries do not appear at all in WorldCat. 1 Moreover, these figures are conservative because they do not count additional features of the NUC—cross-references, additional library locations, and bibliographic notes—that are also missing in WorldCat. Large libraries that must deal with difficult or exceptional questions are well advised to retain their sets. (In my own experience at the Library of Congress, I still refer to the NUC two or three times a month.) This printed set has not been digitized by anyone.
The Pre-’56 NUC (or NUC) is arranged alphabetically by authors’ names (including corporate authors), with entries by titles when no names are apparent. (It cannot be searched by subject.) Like WorldCat it lists not just books but many other formats as well: pamphlets, maps, music (scores and print material but not sound recordings), government documents (local, state, and federal), microforms, serials, conference proceedings, annuals, and even some manuscripts. Most of the listed works are in the Roman, Greek, or Gaelic alphabets, but there are also many entries in Arabic, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Korean, the various Indic alphabets, and other non-Latin characters.
One very important point about the National Union Catalog: Pre-1956 Imprints is that it is made up of two different alphabetical sequences, and both must be consulted when you are looking for a record that fails to appear in WorldCat. The first extends from A to Z in volumes 1 through 685; but volumes 686 through 754 provide an entirely separate A–Z sequence with about 900,000 entries, cross-references, and additional library locations not found in the first alphabet. (The reason is that the first sequence took decades to publish, and in the meantime the project continued to receive reports of new entries and locations that fell within letters of the alphabet that had already been printed. These additional reports form the second sequence.) The lists of additional library locations (for works reported in the first 685 volumes) appear in tabular form at the end of each volume in the second (686–754) sequence. The most common library location symbols are listed on the endpapers of each volume; the full list is printed in volumes 200, 560, and 754. 2
Regrettably, whenever an NUC set is sent to remote storage, the volumes of this second alphabetical sequence are never requested because no one knows they are there or how much they contain. Indeed, NUC sets in remote storage tend not to be consulted at all, since the people who have set them offsite tend to be the same people who are also misinforming patrons that “it’s all in the computer.”
A few samples of questions that could not be answered by WorldCat:
In short, the Pre-’56 NUC continues to show—occasionally—entries, cross-references, library locations, and note field information that is not found in any online source. The underlying reason is that many large libraries did not do a good job of retrospective conversion when they switched from their old card catalogs to the new online versions. A lot of their older records were incorrectly or only partially digitized or not digitized at all. That’s why the old printed union catalogs still retain their value in turning up older records that slipped through the cracks of the digital conversions.
An online catalog that merges the holdings of more than 70 major university, special, and national libraries in the United Kingdom and Ireland may be freely searched at http://copac.ac.uk. COPAC turns up many items not in WorldCat. The German site mounted by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology at www.bibliothek.kit.edu/cms/website-durchsuchen.php also covers libraries not in WorldCat, as does The European Library at www.theeuropeanlibrary.org, which searches 48 national and research libraries in Europe.
Google Books provides full texts of millions of volumes digitized from a score of major research libraries at http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search. In general, however, volumes published after 1922 appear only in snippets because of copyright restrictions. HathiTrust.org is another free website for full texts of books that are in the public domain; it, too, scans its texts from participating libraries. The Internet Archive (archive.org) is also useful. Hundreds of additional full-text databases, covering both pre- and post-1922 texts, are available through the research libraries that subscribe to them (see Chapters 4 and 5).
Catalogs that merge the files or holdings of several libraries are called “union lists.” Although WorldCat and the Pre-’56 NUC both list some unpublished manuscripts, there are additional union lists specifically for these materials. They will tell you which archives or manuscript repositories hold whose papers (either individuals’ papers or those of corporate bodies). The first is the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC, pronounced “nuckmuck” by librarians); it is freely available on the open Internet at www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc. It covers 116,000 collections held in 1,800 repositories in the United States; its listings are included in WorldCat; and there is also a printed version of it. The free online version, however, is preferable because it covers not only the NUCMC catalog records but also those in the OCLC Archival and Mixed Collections file.
The second is Archive Finder, a ProQuest subscription database covering more than 220,000 manuscript collections in the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland. It includes everything in NUCMC from 1959 to 2006, with additional material (but not the extra OCLC listings). Another subscription source is ArchiveGrid from OCLC, which lists manuscript collections in the United States, often with the full texts of their accompanying finding guides.
For locating copies of journals, especially older titles, two printed sources are noteworthy for their capacity to turn up entries (with library locations) that are not in WorldCat. They are the Union List of Serials (ULS) and New Serial Titles. The former is a 5-volume set published by the H. W. Wilson Company (3rd ed., 1965) listing about 227,000 titles and cross-references for journals that began publication before 1950, as reported by 956 U.S. and Canadian libraries. The latter is a series of multivolume cumulative supplements to it (1950–1970, 1971–1975, 1976–1980, etc.); after 1980 it can be considered superseded by WorldCat. If you are looking for old periodical titles, be sure to check the Pre-’56 NUC too, which lists many titles not in the ULS.
Any number of specialized union lists exist, recording library holdings in particular regions (e.g., California Union List of Periodicals, Journal Holdings in the Washington-Baltimore Area) or for particular subjects (e.g., Union List of Military Periodicals; Education Journals: A Union List). There are also union lists from other countries (e.g., British Union-Catalogue of Periodicals, France’s Catalogue Collectif des Periodiques) and combinations of subject and area holdings (e.g., Union List of Statistical Serials in British Libraries; Art Serials: Union List of Art Periodicals and Serials in Research Libraries in the Washington DC Metropolitan Area).
Such publications are usually given the form subdivision—Union lists within the Library of Congress Subject Headings system. As of this writing, in LC’s own online catalog there are more than 2,900 entries that have this designation. These specialized lists sometimes provide titles and library locations that do not show up in WorldCat or printed catalogs. For example, the old periodical Filmplay Journal (1921– ) is not recorded in WorldCat, the Pre-’56 NUC, or Union List of Serials; it is listed, with a library location, in Union List of Film Periodicals: Holdings of Selected American Collections (Greenwood Press, 1984).
One trick to be aware of in using any union catalog, whether online or printed, is to try slightly variant spellings of names or titles if the one you start with does not work. This is important because the different libraries contributing to the union catalogs may have used different cataloging practices in listing the same items; also, researchers themselves may not have accurate citations to begin with for the items they wish to find. In my own experience, for example, I’ve found works by “Lessem” that were initially asked for under the name “Lessen”; “Bullettino di Pisano” when “Bolletino” was cited; “Schmidt” when “Smith” was cited; “Abernethy” when the original footnote read “Abernathy”; and a crucial cross-reference (in the second alphabet of the NUC) from “Maurus, Hartmannus” to “Mohr, Hartmann” when the researcher’s original citation said “Hartman, Mauri.” This approach works with surprising frequency. If you don’t find what you want in using any citation as originally recorded, don’t trust its accuracy. Play around with variant forms. Many footnotes are simply inaccurate to begin with.
If you are looking for a copy of any particular out-of-print publication, you are no longer limited to searching the holdings of libraries. Various Internet sites can now systematically find books (or other publications) for sale from secondhand book dealers worldwide. Four sites in particular should be searched:
The first two are “meta” engines that combine the results of multiple book-search engines. Abebooks, while ostensibly covered by the other two engines, will still sometimes show additional titles if you search it directly. I have often found books and magazines in these sites that do not appear in WorldCat or the various printed union catalogs, and usually the researchers looking for an older book—especially a beloved title remembered from childhood—are delighted to find copies that they can actually purchase. The same sites are useful if you wish to determine the market value of an old book: the listings you get will tell you what prices are currently being asked for it. (One tip: if you are searching for an old book and do not find it listed under its title, try searching its author’s name without specifying the title: sometimes old books are reprinted under different titles.)
No matter how good the coverage of WorldCat, the other online sources, and all of the printed union catalogs, research libraries will always have many items that are recorded only on their own premises. It is foolish to think that “everything is online.” If, then, you cannot find a desired item in full-text format online, pinpoint the location of it through a union list or database, or find a copy for sale, then the next best thing is to identify a collection that is likely to have it. Several good sources for determining the existence and location of specialized subject collections exist, for the United States and internationally:
As with union lists, there are also many specialized guides to libraries in particular regions within the United States and to those in other countries (e.g., Special Collections at Georgetown; Special Collections and Subject Area Strengths in Maine Libraries; Special Collections in German Libraries). Other library directories exist for particular subject areas (e.g., Directory of Music Research Libraries; International Directory of Art Libraries; Tribal Libraries in the United States [American Indian collections]). The librarians in your area can tell you which ones exist locally. A good shortcut is to search for two forms of heading in the LCSH system:
(See also the sections on Special Collections, Online and Microform, in Chapter 13—these sources may contain individual items that you are looking for and that do not show up anywhere else.)
The United States, Canada, and Great Britain are particularly blessed with having good interlibrary loan (ILL) networks. If you cannot find a copy of the article or book you’ve identified, ask your local librarian (either academic or public) about the possibility of borrowing from another library. (It would be best to first consult with the reference librarians, however, especially if you need a journal article—not all of the journals held by your library will show up in its online catalog listings. When libraries have subscriptions to databases from Gale, EBSCOhost, ProQuest, LexisNexis, and other vendors, they may effectively have full-text access to thousands of electronic journals not recorded in their own local catalog. The reference librarians will know how to check if any journal shows up in electronic form, from any of these various vendors. They offer tens of thousands of online journals not in JSTOR.) Remember, too, that many obscure and out-of-print books that don’t show up in your library’s OPAC may still be available in Google Books or Hathi Trust (www.hathitrust.org) or may be purchasable via the websites listed above.
You can sometimes have copies made at a remote library by contacting it and asking if it maintains a list of local freelance researchers for hire.
The overall point to keep in mind is that if you have identified a good source that is not online, not purchasable, and not available in your local library, don’t give up. The same local library is likely to have additional sources beyond those available on the open Web for identifying which other libraries either have the desired item or are likely to have it.